h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The net has quickly become the largest community in the world. Like any community it has its sub cultures, those who seek to dominate and those who seek chaos.

Movement around the web is generally free. We each will quickly establish reputations wherever we go and that reputation may be very different in different areas.

But central to its core is anonymity. We can usually have several email accounts, and use each for different types of activities. With few limits, such as the limited access to IP addresses, our identity is whatever we say it is.

It seems some want to change that, at least for themselves. Increasingly, large internet companies are attempting to network our various guises. Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, each among the largest of the internet communities all seem to be part of this trend.

How do others feel about the potential loss of anonymity?

Perhaps we will all learn to be consciously schizophrenic.
We'll have to create a RL, 100% honest and varifiable ID
along with one or more anonymous online personae.

Yesterday was my birthday and I was startled to find a Google
doodle of cakes and candles on my homepage with the Alt Text
reading "Happy Birthday John".

It kinda freaked me out at first, wondering who did that and how.
Then I deduced that Google can read my profile data on FB where
in all honesty I had provided that detail years ago when I joined.
My profile doesn't give much else away.

In the earlier years, with no established patterns or etiquette
I had always been sorta half-and-half in being myself or another
character persona online. Trouble is I'm old enough to know full
well that the Truth will always out and it's hard to maintain a lie.
Round here I am always just myself.

~jwf~

Thank you for your response.

I confess I hadn't seen it that way. Which is the value of discussion really!

Do you have multiple interests which you keep separate?

Not really. It's just that, as you suggest, there is
a whole whirled of possibilities in anonymous posting,
especially in conversations about religion, philosophy,
politics. One can play the fool or devil's advocate.

And I am also a senior , with a wicked sense of
humour who enjoys engaging folks of all ages. And I
know most young folks get all creeped-out if they think
they are talking to old farts. I don't blame them at all.

Fair dues though, I often get creeped out by young folks
who seem to be missing out on having a sense of purpose,
an education, a moral center or any value systems beyond
their own needs, desires and gratifications. Not unlike I
was as a youth, but now I find their predicaments amusing
and sometimes can even offer advice.

Beyond that there are times when I need to just be myself,
especially when chatting with people I know in RL. No point
in trying to fool them; they know me, they know what I'm like.

I like your name BTW. Quite creative. It drew me into this
conversation.


~jwf~